My life changed the day I signed my first record contract.

I didn't know it then, but it plunged me deep into the business world of music for the next 45 years.
I had no mentors, no consultants and certainly no books to offer me insights into the spiral onto which I had just embarked…a spiral through seven managers in the first five years and worse yet, signed 100% of my songwriting publishing away before I had even written my first song.

Changes in the industry.

The music business has changed dramatically since that first contract was signed in 1965 as a member of The Turtles, but many things still remain the same. The incredible amount of stories I have personally heard, telling of lost careers and lost human beings, could fill a very large book.

For every successful story, there are many more reflecting the outcomes of battered lives left to fade away in the wake of misguided musical choices and decisions.

Todays music business climate.

Today musicians, artists and songwriters still sign agreements they do not completely understand and the results of that turn the dream of success into a battle of survival, not just as a musician, but as a battle for life. Record companies, for the most part, still function as a small cog in the much larger wheel of the corporate structure and the musicians, artists and songwriters are the oil that greases the cog in the wheel.